FireEye shares soar after listing

Ashar Aziz
, the founder of
FireEye
, a global cyber-security firm that works with Australian businesses, including the major banks, has denied any “special relationship" with the United States government after FireEye listed publicly on the Nasdaq on Friday night.

FireEye’s share price surged 80 per cent on its opening day, investors valuing the unprofitable company at more than $US4 billion ($4.3 billion). Mr Aziz’s personal shareholding jumped from $218.2 million to $392.8 million by the close of trade.

The surge came as Wall Street’s confidence in technology companies has strengthened in expectation of similar listings from social network Twitter and others later this year, and despite revelations of links between US security agencies and private firms.

FireEye, which is backed by the Central Intelligence Agency’s venture ­capital fund, offers real-time, enterprise-wide monitoring solutions that strive to protect governments and ­companies against sophisticated malicious ­software (“malware"), which criminals and nation states use to penetrate target networks.

In Australia, FireEye is understood to work with customers including the Commonwealth Bank, ANZ, National Australia Bank, the Australian Federal Police and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

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Growing presence in Australia

Mr Aziz told The Australian Financial Review the company had a growing team in Australia and a number of well-known enterprise customers “in verticals including finance, government, telco and high-tech".

He revealed that FireEye’s products are widely deployed in more than 40 military intelligence agencies around the world, including many non “Five Eyes" nations.

The Five Eyes intelligence alliance comprises agencies from the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

Before listing on the Nasdaq, FireEye had raised more than $US100 million from a range of prominent early-stage investors. These included the non-profit-making In-Q-Tel, a venture capital fund that invests in technology ­companies “to support the missions of the CIA and [the] broader US intelligence community".

Long-time CIA director George Tenet has written that the “CIA ­identifies pressing problems, and In-Q-Tel provides the technology to address them".

Asked whether there had been any effect of recent disclosures that US companies can be legally required to facilitate foreign espionage, Mr Aziz said he was “not aware of any impact that ­perception – which is completely false – has had on our business".

‘No special relationship’

The US National Security Agency was recently found to be contracting private-sector companies, such as the France-based Vupen, to provide computer vulnerabilities that it could use in online attacks on other countries or companies.

“We have no special relationship with the US government and have not granted them any privileges – we are a global cyber-security company and intend to stay that way," Mr Aziz said.

He said the journey to creating a multibillion-dollar firm had not been easy.

“I’ve been through two difficult periods. The first was in 2001 and 2002 with the collapse of the dot-com and telco industries," he said.

“My original start-up, Terraspring [a network software supplier], had a hard time overcoming that crisis."

He sold Terraspring to Sun Microsystems in 2002.

“And then with FireEye, the first five years were really hard on a variety of fronts," he said.

“The cyber threats were not well understood or well documented, and as the actors adapted techniques and tactics, they were not, of course, telling us."

Mr Aziz said that FireEye had to build its technology “by studying live networks to see what attack vectors were being harnessed".

“But just as we developed a viable product in 2008 we were hit by the financial collapse. When you spend four-plus years building a product and finally have it working, and then the market tanks that same year – it’s a big challenge," he said.